The cozy little town of Pine Deep buried the horrors of its past a long time ago. Thirty years have gone by since the darkness descended and the Black Harvest began, a time when a serial killer sheared a bloody swath through the quiet Pennsylvania village. The evil that once coursed through Pine Deep has been replaced by cheerful tourists getting ready to enjoy the country’s largest Halloween celebration in what is now called “The Spookiest Town in America.”

Dead Man’s Song: The Pine Deep Trilogy, Book 2

From the powerful imagination of a horror master comes a bone-chilling tale set in a small town where good and evil are joined in a terrifying, deadly battle. Once an idyllic Pennsylvania village, Pine Deep awoke one morning to find itself bathed in a massive bloodletting. Twice in 30 years, the townsfolk have endured the savage hungers of a murderous madman—but if the residents think the death of serial killer Karl Ruger put an end to the carnage, they’re dead wrong.

Bad Moon Rising: The Pine Deep Trilogy, Book 3

Each year, the residents of Pine Deep host the Halloween Festival, drawing tourists and celebrities from across the country to enjoy the deliciously creepy fun. Those who visit the small Pennsylvania town are out for a good time, but those who live there are desperately trying to survive. For a monstrous evil lives among them, a savage presence whose malicious power has grown too powerful even for death to hold it back.

Predator One: A Joe Ledger Novel

On opening day of the new baseball season, a small model-kit airplane flies down from the stands and buzzes the mound, where a decorated veteran pilot is about to throw out the first ball. The toy plane is the exact replica of the one flown by the war hero. Everyone laughs, thinking it's a prank or a publicity stunt. Until it explodes, killing dozens.

Code Zero: Joe Ledger, Book 6

For years the Department of Military Sciences has fought to stop terrorists from using radical bioweapons - designer plagues, weaponized pathogens, genetically modified viruses, and even the zombie plague that first brought Ledger into the DMS. These terrible weapons have been locked away in the world’s most secure facility. Until now. Joe Ledger and Echo Team are scrambled when a highly elite team of killers breaks the unbreakable security and steals the world’s most dangerous weapons.

Limbus Inc.

A shadowy employment agency that operates at the edge of the normal world. Limbus's employess are just as suspicious and ephemeral as the motives of the company, if indeed it could be called a company in the normal sense of the word. In this shared-world anthology, five heavy hitters from the dark worlds of horror, fantasy, and sci-fi pool their warped takes on the shadow organization that offers employment of the most unusual kind to those on the fringes of society.

Extinction Machine: The Joe Ledger Novels, Book 5

The president of the United States vanishes from the White House. A top-secret prototype stealth fighter is destroyed during a test flight. Witnesses on the ground say that it was shot down by a craft that immediately vanished at impossible speeds. All over the world, reports of UFOs are increasing at an alarming rate. And in a remote fossil dig in China dinosaur hunters have found something that is definitely not of this earth.

Dead of Night: A Zombie Novel

A prison doctor injects a condemned serial killer with a formula designed to keep his consciousness awake while his body rots in the grave. But all drugs have unforeseen side-effects. Before he can be buried, the killer wakes up. Hungry. Infected. Contagious. This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang… but a bite.

Assassin's Code: The Joe Ledger Novels, Book 4

When Joe Ledger and Echo Team rescue a group of American college kids held hostage in Iran, the Iranian government then asks them to help find six nuclear bombs planted in the Mideast oil fields. These stolen WMDs will lead Joe and Echo Team into hidden vaults of forbidden knowledge, mass-murder, betrayal, and a brotherhood of genetically-engineered killers with a thirst for blood.

Joe Ledger: Special Ops

Captain Joe Ledger - former cop, former Army Ranger, and currently the top-kick of Echo Team, an elite squad of first-class shooters who roll out to face down the world's most dangerous terrorists. Not fanatics with explosive vests or political hostage takers. Joe and his team square off against terrorists who have the most advanced and exotic weapons of mass destruction, designer bioweapons, cutting-edge transgenics…real mad-scientist stuff.

Dust and Decay

A New York Times best-selling author and multiple Bram Stoker Award winner, Marvel Comics writer Jonathan Maberry continues the story he began in Rot and Ruin. Six months have passed since Benny Imura and Nix Riley learned that flesh-eating zombies aren’t the scariest or most dangerous monsters around. Now, Benny’s brother Tom is training them in the art of zombie whacking. But as they plan to leave and find a better future, a zombie attack puts a crimp in their plans.

Limbus Inc., Book II

Mathew Sellers revealed the truth of Limbus, Inc., to the world, and in his tales of time travelers, intergalactic beings, and human sacrifice, thought he had told it all. But the story of the shadowy employment agency that operates on the edge of the abyss, always finding the perfect person for the perfect job - no matter what the cost - had only begun.

Rot & Ruin

Fifteen-year-old Benny Imura lives in a world infested with zombies where, when a kid turns 15, he must get a job to continue receiving food rations. Benny has no interest in the family business of zombie killing, but figures he doesn’t have much of a choice. He’s tried out a bunch of other jobs, and hasn’t found anything he likes. But as Benny starts training with his brother, he learns things about being human that he never expected.

Flesh & Bone: Rot & Ruin Series, Book 3

Reeling from the devastation of Dust & Decay, Benny Imura and his friends plunge deep into the zombie-infested wastelands of the great Rot & Ruin. Benny, Nix, Lilah, and Chong journey through a fierce wilderness that was once America, searching for the jet they saw in the skies months ago. If that jet exists, then humanity itself must have survived somewhere.

Fall of Night: Dead of Night, Book 2

Officers Fox and Hammond, along with journalist Billy Trout, are calling it the beginning of the end. This is the zombie apocalypse. An insane escaped serial killer is infecting Stebbins County with a deadly virus, and now the whole world is watching while Fox, Trout, and the remaining inhabitants of Stebbins fight for their life against - what? The undead? The President and the National Guard are ready to nuke Stebbins, PA off the map and cut their losses. But the infection is spreading and fast.

Fire & Ash: Rot & Ruin

Benny Imura and his friends have found the jet and Sanctuary - but neither is what they expected. Instead of a refuge, Sanctuary is a hospice, and the soldiers who flew the plane seem to be little more than bureaucrats who have given up hope for humanity's future. With Chong hovering between life and death, clinging to his humanity by a thread, Benny makes a startling discovery: a scientist may have discovered a cure for the zombie plague. Desperate to save Chong, Benny and his friends mount a search and rescue mission. But they're not the only ones on the hunt.

The King of Plagues: The Joe Ledger Novels, Book 3

Saturday, 0911 hours — A blast rocks a London hospital and thousands are dead or injured. 1009 hours — Joe Ledger arrives on scene to investigate. The horror is unlike anything he has ever seen. Compelled by grief and rage, Ledger rejoins the Department of Military Sciences, and within hours he's attacked by a hit team of assassins and sent on a suicide mission.

The Dragon Factory: The Joe Ledger Novels, Book 2

In The Dragon Factory, Ledger and his team from the Department of Military Sciences square off against two separate groups of corrupt scientists. The beautiful but twisted Jakoby Twins are creating transgenic monsters and genetically enhanced mercenaries for sale to the highest bidder. Their father, who takes evil to an entirely new level, is using cutting-edge science to complete the Nazi master-race program.

Darkness on the Edge of Town: Stories of Pine Deep

In "Long Way Home", a young soldier returns from the Middle East and discovers that there is another - and much stranger - war to be fought in his hometown. In "Mister Pockets" a young paperboy discovers that a random act of kindness may have greater consequences - especially as night falls in Pine Deep.

In this sweeping, threaded narrative of the global phenomenon known as the Vampire Wars, mankind is unwittingly infected by a millennia-old bacteria unknowingly exhumed by a scientific expedition in Antarctica. Now, in some rare cases, a person’s so-called junk DNA becomes activated. Depending on their racial and ethnic heritage, they begin to manifest one of the many diverse forms of the "others" that are the true basis for the legends of supernatural creatures. These aren’t your usual vampires and werewolves - it goes much deeper than that.

Patient Zero: The Joe Ledger Novels, Book 1

When you have to kill the same terrorist twice in one week there’s either something wrong with your world or something wrong with your skills - and there’s nothing wrong with Joe Ledger’s skills. And that’s both a good and a bad thing. It’s good because he’s a Baltimore detective who has just been secretly recruited by the government to lead a new task force created to deal with the problems that Homeland Security can’t handle....

V Wars: Blood and Fire: New Stories of the Vampire Wars

It's been one year since a virus triggered junk DNA and people all over the world started changing, becoming something else, craving blood. It's been 10 months since the word vampire stopped being something from old monster stories and Hollywood movies. It's been six months since our world and theirs erupted into war, two since an uneasy peace was signed, and one hour since that peace was shattered. The war is here again - the vampire war.

Publisher's Summary

From a master of horror comes an apocalyptic showdown between the residents of a secluded, rural town and the deadly evil that confronts them wherever they turn.

Evil doesn’t die.

The cozy little town of Pine Deep buried the horrors of its past a long time ago. Thirty years have gone by since the darkness descended and the Black Harvest began, a time when a serial killer sheared a bloody swath through the quiet Pennsylvania village. The evil that once coursed through Pine Deep has been replaced by cheerful tourists getting ready to enjoy the country’s largest Halloween celebration in what is now called “The Spookiest Town in America.”

It just grows stronger.

But then—a month before Halloween—it begins. Unspeakably desecrated bodies. Inexplicable insanity. An ancient evil walks the streets, drawing in those who would fall to their own demons and seeking to shred the very soul of this rapidly fracturing community. Yes, the residents of Pine Deep have drawn together and faced a killer before. But this time, evil has many faces—and the lust and will to rule the earth. This struggle will be epic.

What the Critics Say

“Maberry supplies plenty of chills, both earthbound and otherworldly, in this atmospheric horror novel…This is horror on a grand scale, reminiscent of Stephen King’s heftier works.” (Publishers Weekly)

This book was refreshingly different.The author has done an excellent job of developing the characters and only eluding to the underlying monsters that have plagued this town. Only thing I didnt like was having the book end before the story was finished I can only hope there is a second installment to find out how the hero(s) come out.

If you love the Joe Ledger novels and were excited to find something else by Jonathan Maberry, let me save you the trouble by warning you away from this absolute trainwreck. it's like what Maberry might have written when he was a college sophomore - overwritten, over-dramatic, and with some of the oddest use of adjectives ever. It's clumsy, ugly, and saddest of all - a complete bore of a listen.

I really enjoyed this book. For me, it's MUCH better than the Joe Ledger novels. It reminded me of the best aspects of Stephen King and the narrator, while a bit annoying at first, really isn't that bad. I'm looking forward to the next 2 installments.

You can tell this is some of Maberry's early work because I feel he is spending way too much time on character developement and detail he doesn't need to be. Seems to be over doing a few things. However the story is awesome once you get into it. The series flows more like one book kinda like The Stand .. instead of three seperate books. It really starts coming together in the 2nd book. I suggest you stick with it. Im glad I did. No its not Joe Ledger.. or Tom Amora for that matter. Its still really good once you get over the narrator. It really is a great and brilliant story as a hole.

I prefer Maberry's Joe Ledger series, but this was fine. I will probably continue with this series. I'm not much for these "horror in a small town" stories made famous by Stephen King. A steady diet of them warps my thinking.

I gave this four stars, so I do like the book. There are some really good parts to the book, and I will continue the series. There are plenty of evil characters to hate in this book and bad and good are black and white.

A NURSE CAME IN, WOKE HIM UP AND GAVE HIM A SEDATIVE.This suffers greatly from what I like to call trilogyitis. That is when a author has a great idea for a great book, but his editor talks him into making a trilogy out of it, even though the writer only has enough story to fill one large book. Stephen King usually just writes one big book and it is usually a very good book. Lesser authors stretch out three books in order to sell more books, yet they don't really have that much material. This usually makes the middle of the book pretty boring. With this book you could start at chapter 21 and read to the end and you will have the entire story.

IT CONSTANTLY AMAZED HIM THAT PENNSYLVANIA WAS MORE REDNECK THEN PARTS OF THE SOUTH.This was an interesting observation. I lived in rural Pa. in 1976, which is when this story starts. I came from the Ozarks, but there were as many rednecks as in the Ozarks. This goes back to the winner writes the history books. King pointed out in one of his books that Maine had a similar organization to the KKK, that was very active.

This is not as good as the Joe Ledger Novels, but it is still better then a lot that is available.

The Narrator was good in parts, but kind of phoned it in in other parts.

"Ghost Road Blues" was kind of like Diet Stephen King: no calories, half the flavor. Jonathan Maberry apparently scripts comic books too, and that was apparent in the melodramatic prose and the prolonged fight scenes in this book.

Thirty years ago, the small town of Pine Deep was victimized by a serial killer in what became known as the Black Harvest. A bunch of redneck cops killed the man they believed responsible, an itinerant black guitar-player known only as "the Bone Man," but in fact the Bone Man had already killed the real killer. Except he didn't because the real killer is a supernatural something-or-other who, of course, returns. As does the Bone Man, to give occasional dream-like warnings to the protagonists.

Now, Pine Deep is famous nationwide for its elaborate haunted hay rides, which basically turn the whole town into a horror amusement park every fall. A couple of survivors of the Black Harvest are still alive, but most of the town has forgotten or would like to forget about the origin of its highly profitable "scary" reputation.

So, besides the repetitious and melodramatic prose, the characters were flat archetypes. Malcolm Crow, a recovered alcoholic, is an ex-cop who runs a comic book store and has a black belt in jujutsu, and if the triumph-of-the-nerds point is missed, he befriends a fourteen-year-old boy who fantasizes about being a superhero while getting beaten at home by his stepdad. The main characters are likeable if cliche, but the villains, well, they're all not only evil, but Eeeeeeeevil! First we have a trio of thugs running from a drug deal gone bad; the alpha-thug is a hyper-violent psychopath who spends much of the book dwelling on just how violently and evilly he's going to hurt people. There is the crazy tow truck driver who hears voices in his head and who turns into a cannibalistic serial killer without a qualm. And there is that evil stepdad who also turns out to be a minion of the Big Bad, but just in case being the willing servant of a demonic serial killer and beating his wife and stepson black and blue on a regular basis doesn't make him evil enough, Maberry underlines how really, really evil he is by offhandedly having him also publish a white supremacist newsletter. You know, so we won't miss that he's really, really evil.

So here's what really torqued me about this book: it's the first in a trilogy and it was obviously written with the next two books in mind, meaning, there isn't even an attempt to make it self-contained. We're given hints of the supernatural Unspeakably Bad Thing that's about to happen all through the book, but the entire novel is just a build-up. The author is putting the pieces in place for the real badness to go down in the next volume. We meet the villains and the heroes, there is some intestine-chewing, and a few minor characters get kacked to jerk some tears, but oh boy, things are really gonna hit the fan in the next book! Umm, no thanks.

It's not bad, if you like completely mainstream horror novels, but Maberry really does seem to be trying too hard to be Stephen King. While he's certainly a more economical writer and he gets to the point waaaay faster than Evil Stevie does, his characters have none of the dimensionality and gruesomely interesting detail that even King's villains possess, and Ghost Road Blues uses violent evil goons and a few maggoty gross-outs like a hammer. A defter horror writer (like King — yes I'm a fan, for all his flaws) can convey spine-chilling dread with everyday objects or a half-remembered phrases from childhood. Maberry tries to do it by repeating ghoulish incantations over and over and over in the characters' heads.

Ultimately, there just wasn't anything original here and definitely nothing scary, so I don't care enough about what happens to read the next book.

I found the narrator annoying, frankly. He uses a gravelly, snarling voice for all the villains, adding a Translyvania accent for the Big Bad, and I didn't like the breathless, whiny, or chirpy way he conveyed female voices. The narration was clear enough, but I'm just not a fan of the reading.

What did you like best about Ghost Road Blues? What did you like least?

The horror element of the story can be campy at times but it's actually very good. What surprised me though was how the book ended. It wasn't a cliff-hanger but many of the characters in the story, and there are a few, didn't have any real conclusion. The whole book felt like a setup for the sequel which is something that one usually feels while reading the second book.

I'm currently in the middle of "Ghost Road Blues" and I'm getting that "first 100 pages" feeling. I'm starting to look for a different book... Don't get me wrong! I love the Joe Ledger series and the Rot and Ruin stuff but I'm having an awful time getting attached to this one. It may be partly the narrator who's a little dry but the flow is off as well. I'm reminded of the first dance with a new girl - awkward. I'll admit I'm spoiled by Ray Porter (narrator of the Joe Ledger series) who makes me look for excuses to go for a drive (I listen mostly in the car). More than once I've taken the long way home just to have more Joe Ledger time but "Ghost Road Blues" just doesn't grab me. I think this one's gonna end up being "filler" between downloads.

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